Online Culture, Sexualization, & Linguistic Imperialism

While the first three key words deliver Google images mainly comprised of maps, flags, animals, or other typical cultural signifiers, things change when one searches for "Asian," as you can clearly see below.

European:

African:

American:

Asian:

This discussion has some people upset over what they deem is a racially-sexualized condition both online as well as in the English-speaking consciousness. Though the "findings" (I use this term loosely as this is hardly a formal research project) may allude to how people view Asians, especially women, as sexual objects, we should also remember that Google isn't the only search engine for the entire world.

Some more comparisons with Naver, South Korea's popular search engine, offer image results that are much less sexy (due to the country's relative conservative sensibility). But the key difference here is the language usage, which requires this conversation to be much more nuanced. For instance, the Korean language has separate words for American "things" v. American "people," making these findings much more useful towards analyzing how Westerners use search engines as well as what they expect as search results.

Which brings me to this debate on if and how the English language is becoming (or already has become) a tool for linguistic imperialism.